for a hundred miles through the desert
by wreckageofstars
Summary: Han has a hard time coming to terms with Luke's fall to the dark side during Dark Empire; so does Luke.


__You do not have to walk on your knees/For a hundred miles through the desert__ _,_ _ _repenting__ _._

* * *

The air as they disembarked from the Falcon was cool, dry, but too smoke-clogged to be refreshing, polluted with Force-knows what, the scent of dirty, sweaty beings, burning oil, over-heated metal filling his nostrils.

"There are no Jedi here," Luke said as soon as his feet reached the solid ground, blue eyes distant, face disturbingly blank, and of course – _of course_ , Han Solo thought with a twinge of something bitter-yellow in his gut, eyes roving over the dingy space-port tiredly, hairs on the back of his neck standing on end like they had ever since – ever since –

"Well, you sure know how to pick 'em, kid," he said uncharitably, the 'kid' sticking uncomfortably in his mouth. Luke wasn't a kid anymore, not really. Hadn't been a kid since his black, gloved arm had made its home around Han's own neck – _stop it, Solo_.

Well. He hadn't been a kid before that, really, either. Probably had stopped being a kid the moment the Imperials had burnt his home to the ground and his family with it, but wasn't that true for all of them?

"Might as well come with me anyway," he said gruffly, heading off to the left, feeling Chewie's absence at his side like an ache. He'd stayed behind, at Han's request. Despite Leia's insistence that she didn't ' _need a hairy babysitter, Han'_ ,he hadn't liked the idea of her being without at least someone he trusted implicitly. His wife was strong, and capable, and probably smarter than anyone he knew but that didn't mean she was _safe_. And the baby -

The baby hadn't even been born yet and it had already been in mortal danger more times than he could count. He had nightmares, some nights, about the baby and Leia, Jacen and Jaina, _his family_ , felled by some faceless foe that he never even saw coming, swallowed by the dark, woke up freezing with sweat, his teeth aching.

"You never told me what you're even doing here," Luke said in reply, stepping lightly beside him to catch up with his longer stride, dark cloak flapping in the putrid breeze that he (aggravatingly) didn't seem bothered by. "I don't want to get in the way. I – I really thought there might be lost Jedi here." The tone was almost apologetic. Han really wanted to believe it was, but the truth was his erstwhile friend had never been harder to read. "The Force in this place feels – odd."

 _Odd. Great_. He had a bad feeling about this.

"I," Han said, zeroing in on the seediest bar in their immediate vicinity – that would be the one his contact had insisted upon, "am still trying to recruit more smugglers to work with the New Republic. I'm working my way down a list of old friends."

"Old friends," Luke said, the barest hint of a smile in his voice. "The type of friends that tend to greet you with a blaster aimed between the eyes?"

"Don't know what other kinds of friends you might be talking about," Han muttered as they approached, the neon aurebesh letters above the entrance searing his eyeballs. "But no funny Jedi-business, alright? I don't want anyone getting Force-whammied. I'm gonna convince them the old-fashioned way – with a coupl'a bottles of Corellian whiskey."

"You know I wouldn't," Luke said, voice too quiet to be indignant, but not too quiet to be hurt.

But far too quiet to be the truth. Bile boiled, hot and yellow, in the back of Han's throat, unvoiced frustration bubbling out of his mouth before he could temper it.

"Well, I _used_ to know," he snapped, the hot, satisfying feeling of vindication that flashed through his chest fading as his friend turned to join the crowd of inebriated bar-dwellers. His expression was still hair-raisingly blank, eyes dull. Only the slight crinkle in his forehead, a pale imitation of the unabashed pout that used to grace his face so often, hinted at the way the words had hurt. The not-smile was gone.

"I'll stay out of your way, then," he said, deferring, slipping into the crowd and for a moment Han just stood there, some part of him expecting the shadow of his best friend to come storming back through the crowd, all farm-boy exuberance, voice hingeing on a whine as he insisted on staying with him, insisted that he could be trusted.

"Aw, kriff," he muttered roughly, turning to find a seat at an empty table instead. It had been a half-hearted joke, the kind he might have made before – well, before everything. He hadn't quite meant to -

\- to scare him off. Only that wasn't quite right either. If any of them had a right to be _scared_ -

His jaw clenched in frustration. The trip had been meant to be a way to mend their fences. He'd set out with some half-baked idea of the two of them reminiscing about the old days over a couple of drinks, getting into trouble the way they always seemed to, returning home all the happier for it. Leia had been the one to suggest it.

"You're so tense when you're together," she had said, tucked carefully under his arm as they lay together one night. A carefully considered pause. "You haven't forgiven him. You don't trust him anymore."

And the Jedi-thing creeped him out sometimes, as often as it shocked and awed him, but for all his misgivings about it he couldn't deny that when Leia knew something, _she knew_.

"We've talked about this, Han. You know he didn't mean to," she had said, hand splayed against his chest. "To fall. He thought he could fight it. He was trying to save us all. He _did_ save us all."

"I know that," he remembered saying back, the gloom of their sleeping quarters coating the ceiling, the inside of his throat, leftover dread pooling in his stomach where it had solidified like duracrete and stayed. "Don't think I'm not grateful. I know he was trying to save us, save our kids. But that doesn't change the fact that it was arrogant and – and stupid. We could have – we could have _helped him._ "

 _Before he had to fall. Before he had to hurt us. Hurt you._

And it wasn't that he didn't get it on some level – the lure of the Dark Side, its hooks sunk into the prodigal son like his father before him, inescapable destiny, yadda-yadda, but -

But it was Luke, golden like the sun, goodness practically leaking out of his pores, teeth glinting white in the glare of passing stars, forsaking all that he had done, all that he had achieved, brought to a black, slumping kneel at the foot of that _monster_ and Han – didn't _understand_.

"He couldn't let us help, Han," Leia had said, eyes softening. Her voice was sympathetic, free of the sometimes harsh edge he'd grown to love regardless. She understood, somehow, in a way that he didn't. Maybe in a way that he couldn't. "He loves us too much."

"That's not love," he had retorted, hand reaching for hers in the dark, squeezing."That's – something else."

She had chuckled quietly, though it had not been an entirely happy sound. He had felt the baby move, where she was pressed up against his side. "You married a Skywalker, Han Solo, whether you like it or not. Whether _I_ like it or not. 'Something else' is _what you get_."

The words had sat with him uncomfortably ever since, brought the weight of something that felt alarmingly like destiny down over his head. Luke and Leia – they were a part of something bigger than him, bigger than the New Republic, bigger than the galaxy, maybe, and certainly older. And in a way he supposed he was a part of them, too, and he couldn't – _wouldn't_ – turn his back on them. Not now, not ever. That was how family _worked_.

But some days, he thought tiredly, settling down into a chair with a casual ease that was more illusion than fact, Luke's presence lingering like a shadow behind him, it was harder than he liked to admit.

He did feel a little bad about abandoning the kid. If his contact hadn't chosen that moment to come striding through the crowd, he would have got up to find him, forced a not-apology up his throat. Because he wasn't angry. He wasn't. It was all – all leftover fear he didn't know what to do with and Luke could probably sense that or whatever but that didn't mean that Han shouldn't still make attempt. But it would have to wait. Half-wondering if he should at the very least arm his pistol in his lap, he signalled the server-droid for a round of drinks, forcing his mouth into a disarming grin as Gila Stormrunner, all six Standard feet of her, edged her way warily into the chair opposite him, silvery hair glinting in the dingy, neon lights.

" _Gila,_ " he said, infusing his voice with more warmth than he knew he was capable of. His jaw was already aching. How the kriff did Leia do this for a living? At least when he'd been on the run for his life he hadn't had to smile at people he hated all day. "It's been a while."

"General," she said flatly in kind, and he fought to keep the smile from slipping off of his face. 'General' was even worse than the particular tone of ' _Solo_ ' he'd learned to run away from at an early age.

 _So that's how it's gonna be_.

"I take it from your tone that you and your crew aren't so keen to work for the New Republic," he stated, resisting the urge to slump further down in his chair. His list of 'friends' was growing smaller by the day and almost all of them had declined the New Republic's offer of employment.

Not that he could blame them, really. Back in his smuggling days he couldn't honestly say he would have considered the offer either. The irony wasn't necessarily lost on him.

"You don't sound surprised," she said, settling back in the chair, muscled arms crossing in front of her. "Which tells me you knew what my answer would be before you even bothered to ask. I hope I don't have to explain to you what happens to people who waste my time, _Solo_."

A bead of sweat made its way laboriously down the back of his neck. That would be the particular tone of voice than sang ' _run!_ '. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of some sort of scuffle, raised voices and a glass smashing onto the duracrete. He frowned, blocking out the distraction, swallowing down his desire to turn heel and flee.

"You know that's the last thing I'd ever want to do," he placated, hands up above the table (though he was having regrettable second thoughts about the location of his blaster). "Look, I wouldn't have asked if I hadn't held out some hope. This isn't some scam, or some underhanded attempt at apprehending smugglers. The New Republic needs you, and people like you, Gila."

"You mean people like _us_ ," she said, leaning in, eyes sharp. "That's why they sent you, right Solo? A reformed smuggler sent out into the galaxy to reform other smugglers. I can't deny that it's poetic. The problem," she continued, settling back against the chair, swiping a glass of whiskey for her own as the server-droid returned, "is that you're not one of us. Not anymore, _General_. The answer's no." She drained the glass in one gulp and stood, towering over him. "Thanks for the drink."

"Gila," he protested, snagging his own drink from the server-droid, who was beeping irritatedly. "Would you – would you spread the word at least? Gila!"

But she had disappeared into the throng, silver head bobbing amongst the fray, too far away to hear.

" _Sithspit_ ," he swore, taking an ambitious gulp of his drink, relishing as it burned its way down his throat. He slammed the glass back onto the table, settling back into his chair with a scowl. It had been practically the same conversation on the last dozen or so planets, with the occasional addition of blaster-fire that needed to be dodged. He was running out of list. And with no smugglers, no Jedi, the fleet decimated by the World Destroyers, fragments of the old Empire still out there on the fringes – the New Republic was in dire straits.

He sighed. And the one thing he'd thought he could do to help was, so far, only succeeding in getting him and whoever happened to be with him at the time alternatively drunk or shot at, and most often both. He was tired of it, he realized, staring morosely into his whiskey. There had been a time when he couldn't imagine a life that wasn't lived out of the Falcon, Chewie at his side, Jabba forever nipping at his heels, a time when he couldn't imagine _not wanting_ that life. But lately he'd found himself wanting nothing more than to simply be with his family, away from the remnants of the Empire, safe from the darkness that seemed hellbent on plaguing them, the hand of destiny that seemed determined to steer them constantly into more trouble.

 _Would've been nice if the galaxy had stayed saved the first time we saved it_.

The chirp of his commlink interrupted the train of thought, brought him out of his head. He opened the channel as soon as he recognized the frequency, let Leia's voice filter through the raucous surroundings to his ear. Her voice was strung tightly with tension, sharp, familiar.

" _Han_ ," she said, the sound crackling, disjointed by the long distance, " _are you alright_?"

"Yeah," he replied, though he sat up straighter in response, pulse pounding, ears and eyes straining for signs of danger amid the usual chaos. "Why, what's happened?"

He could hear crying in the background – not all out wails, or a temper tantrum, but distress nonetheless, wrapping around his chest, settling into his spine. He couldn't tell what twin it was.

" _It – it's Luke_ ," she said. His heart dropped into his stomach, though his face only dropped into a scowl. _Of course_ , was his first thought, though it was, perhaps, still slightly uncharitable. " _It was brief, but I felt – something. Something not right. He's not answering his comm, is he with you? I thought you were together._ "

Ah. That would be the creeping sense of guilt now crawling its way back up his throat.

"No," he said, with a tad more indignant bluster than he might have intended. "No. We, ah – he's not with me. But he's around here somewhere. I'm sure it's fine, Leia -"

" _ **Find my brother**_ , _laserbrain_ ," was all she said, genuine worry exiting her mouth as belligerence, crackling through the comm. The wailing in the background quieted. " _I have a bad feeling_."

"That's my line," he muttered under his breath, but pushed aside his glass of whiskey and moved to stand. "Alright, alright," he said, already scanning the crowd for the small, shadowy figure. "I will. Don't worry."

" _I will_ ," she said. " _Comm me once you've found him?_ "

"Yeah," he replied, squinting into the crowd. "But I'm sure it's fine. Kid can take care of himself."

" _Keep telling yourself that_ ," she replied darkly, before cutting off the frequency.

He took a moment to stare tiredly at the comm, mouth agape. The last word, as usual, had not been his.

"Right," he muttered. "Great. Love you too."

The bar was still horrifically crowded, the pulse of music and the smell of beings tightly packed together making it hard to make out individuals in the crowd. But if he knew Luke -

Well. That was the question of the hour, wasn't it. But he knew where to start, anyway.

"Hey," he asked the man behind the actual drinks bar, throat straining to be heard over the din, throwing a few credits down to cover his own drinks. "Has anyone ordered a hot chocolate in the past hour? Small guy, light hair, dark cloak?" _Kind smile, but also vaguely intimidating in a way that no one can ever quite figure out?_

The bartender, a surly-looking Besalisk, frowned down at him distractedly, mixing a drink with the arms that were free. "Yeah, I saw him," he said. "Good tipper. Paid for the hot chocolate but didn't get a chance to finish it."

 _Of course_.

"And why's that?" he asked, struggling not to appear impatient.

"What's it to you?" the Besalisk retorted, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "You got a score to settle with him too?"

" _Score to settle_?" Han asked, heart sinking further with every breath. _Kark it, kark it_. Leia was going to kill him. And maybe Luke too, come to think about it, especially if he was dead. "No, no, I'm – I'm his – I'm looking out for him. Where'd he go?"

"Couple of guys came up behind him not too long ago, said they recognized him from somewhere, didn't like his face."

" _And_?"

"He apologized."

 _Of course. Kark it, kid_.

"Apologized and _then what_?"

The Besalisk stared him down, shoving the finally mixed drink down the bar into the hands of a waiting Twi'lek. His tone was contrite. "They didn't like that very much. Caused a real scene, until I told them to take it outside. They dragged him out the back." He gestured with one of his various arms to a back entrance Han, uncharacteristically, hadn't taken note of earlier.

 _Dragged the experienced Jedi Knight, recently rebounded from the Dark Side, and not a bad hand-to-hand combatant even without all the Force mojo, out into a back alleyway, with all of their limbs intact. Yeah, right. Something doesn't add up here._

" _Kark_ ," he said, with feeling.

"Keep it outside, now," the bartender hollered at his back as Han traipsed towards the back exit, ducking expertly between the other bar patrons, hand reaching for his blaster, teeth gritted. That same bitter yellow coiled in his stomach, soured his throat, even as he did his best to fight it down.

 _Pulling you out of the fire, again_.

It wasn't fair of him, he knew, to place the blame for all that had happened on his friend's shoulders. That blame belonged solely to Palpatine and his never-ending succession of creepy-ass clones, his insatiable ambition, so strong it had reach from beyond the grave. Luke had done nothing more than try to bring him down from the inside, try to limit the casualties at the cost of himself.

Only – and here, Han thought, was where he kept getting stuck, what he couldn't move past, what he couldn't understand – Luke had _failed_. Failed where his father had failed before him, the light in him stamped out and replaced with shadows. Shadows he hadn't been able to rid himself of completely, despite everything; he still wore their remnants like a cloak.

It had felt like a betrayal. A poignant loss, some twisted joke. What was the point of it all, then, if even the galaxy's golden child could fall into the dark?

If Leia hadn't been there -

He muffled a grumbled sigh as he kicked open the back exit, blaster in his hand, finger on the trigger. A cold and freezing rain – that was a new development – pelted his forehead, soaked through his jacket in seconds. (Now the outdoors smelled both disgusting _and_ damp).

But Leia _had_ been there. That was the point, that was why the two of them were where they were, alive and kicking. Dragged back into the light by the force of her belief.

He'd have to make sure they stayed that way.

"Hey!" he yelled, blaster-raised, ignoring the incongruous fact that the assailants (a scarred Rhodian and two humans, one overly-muscled and surly, and the other tall and armed with an ancient-looking blaster), who turned abruptly away from the object of their attention, disguised by the dark behind them, should logically have been at least unconscious on the ground by now. He'd seen Luke in action more times than he could count – even as a desert-fresh farm boy he hadn't been useless in a fight. These days he could be downright deadly when he needed to be. "You want to wake up with your kneecaps where they belong, you leave the kid alone!" Never mind that he couldn't actually see his darkly-clothed friend in the gloom of the alley, though he caught sight of the silvery glint of his lightsaber where it had rolled to a stop at the feet of the Rhodian. His stomach twisted in worry.

"You're friends with this _chssk_?" The taller human sneered at him, blaster glinting wetly in the reflection from the bar's window. His hands were covered in something dark and wet. "He's dangerous company. Every since your little sithspawn helped destroy half the galaxy, the bounty on his head's gone up higher than it was during the days of the Empire."

Han felt his face tighten. _No_ , he thought, pushing back the yellow with a forceful swallow. There was a time and a place and this was not it, not when his best friend was so disturbingly quiet, not when he was still missing the pieces of the puzzle -

"Yeah, well, he didn't exactly – mean to," he retorted, surprised to find himself meaning it, blaster arm unwavering. "He saved a lot of lives too." _Including mine. Including yours, probably_. "I bet that's more than you can say, you pile of nerf poodoo."

"That's quite the mouth," the Rhodian mused, voice thin and raspy. "This must be Han Solo."

"There's a bounty on him too," the tall human said.

Raindrops slid down his face, cold and metallic-smelling. Han scowled.

"If you know who I am, then you know I'm not kidding about your kneecaps. Get out of here," he spat. "I won't say it again." These people were either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid – did they have any idea who he was married to? Collecting a bounty on Han Solo or Luke Skywalker would only bring the undiluted wrath of the New Republic's Chief of State directly down on their heads. It was foolhardy. His knuckles tightened around the blaster.

"If we'd known you were coming we would have drugged your drink as well," the shorter, muscled one offered, and Han felt his blood run cold.

 _Kark their kriffing kneecaps_ , he thought roughly, readjusting his aim – these people were scum. Bounty hunters, only out to make a profit. They didn't deserve any mercy on the New Republic's part -

\- but he thought of Luke, slumped somewhere in the alley behind the thugs, out of sight but not of mind, lightsaber hilt glinting in the sickening neon glow -

He sighed and flicked the blaster settings to stun, dodging a burst from the armed, tall one (who's settings were decidedly _not_ on stun) before Han shot at his blasting arm, then his chest, faster than he could blink. The other two followed suit – unarmed and slow, they were the easiest targets he'd had to hit in a while.

He stepped over them lightly, snagging Luke's lightsaber off the ground, the metal slippery and cold with rain. It felt heavy in his hands. Now that his view of the alley was clear, he could make out the shape of his friend, slumped against a crate, cloak spread out around him, soaked into the duracrete. He looked – small, in the gloom of the planet's nightfall. Defenceless, gloved hands open beside him. His eyes were closed, face bone white, clammy, and when Han crouched down, placed a hand on his head to move it his palm came away bloody.

" _Kark_ ," he said, concern pushing aside the leftover anger bubbling in his gut, watching as his eyelids fluttered. "Hey, Luke. Wake up, okay? We gotta get going, these guys won't stay down for long. _Luke_."

"Mm," he said, eyelids cracking open reluctantly. He blinked, confused, eyes glassy. "Han?"

"No, it's Mara Jade – _of course it's me_. You alright? You bleeding anywhere else I should know about?"

"D-definitely not Mara Jade," he muttered, forehead crinkling. "No, it's -'s fine. 'S cold. What – I don't -"

"Yeah, well. I said you sure knew how to pick 'em," Han said. He grabbed Luke around the upper arm, ready to haul them both to a standing position. "Bounty hunters. They drugged you, roughed you up a bit. I took care of 'em." _Why didn't you?_ "Think you can stand?"

Luke hmmed in reply, eyes slipping closed. Han took that as a 'no'.

"This feels like a running theme," he grumbled, hauling them both upwards and swinging the kid's arm around his shoulders. His knuckles whitened around the kid's lightsaber hilt, turned them so they faced out of the alley. "Though I guess it's been a while. Least this time we're not stumbling through a frozen wasteland."

"No tauntauns," Luke mumbled deliriously into his shoulder, eyes squeezed shut tightly against the presumed disorientation the change in altitude wrought, and he couldn't tell whether it was an observation or a plea.

"No tauntauns," he promised gruffly, just in case. They shuffled out of the alleyway together, at a stumbling, awkward gait, rain pelting down on them from above. It probably would have been more efficient to just pick the kid up and be done with it, dignity aside, but only a few steps out of the alleyway a strangled, queasy-sounding ' _Han_ ,' vetoed that idea. He grimaced sympathetically, averting his eyes as the hot chocolate made its unfortunate reappearance on the side of the road, the hand with the lightsaber awkwardly fisted in the fabric of Luke's shirt to keep him from keeling over along side it, the other still wrapped around his friend's back.

"Any idea what they got you with?" he asked, as they resumed their stumbling trek back to the Falcon. It didn't seem like anything overly dangerous so far, just unpleasant.

"No," Luke said. "S-some kind of – knock-out stuff. Tasted bad." He swallowed carefully. "Both times. Sh-should've seen it coming. F-felt it."

"Well," Han said, without thinking. "You can't get it right every time."

The huffed laugh, nearly drowned out by the pounding of the rain on the dingy metal rooftops, was hollow.

"I really should," was the only reply.

He wasn't sure what to say to that, stomach already tied in uncomfortable knots, and they made their way up the ramp of the Falcon in laboured silence, drenched, shivering, and dripping with polluted rain water. Chewie would have a fit if the water dripped down into the main circuits underneath the floorboards, but at the moment Han couldn't be bothered to deal with it. The Falcon was tough – a little rain from some backwater planet wouldn't be enough to fell her. 'Sorry, sweetheart,' he muttered to the wall, just in case, though, as they stumbled deeper into the ship, leaving a trail of water behind them as they traipsed through to the crew quarters. He deposited Luke on a bunk, leaving him for the moment while he rid himself of his soaked-through boots and vest, dug around for the bacta patches he kept lying about. Rain pelted, sounding tinnily off of the roof of the Falcon.

"I'm going to get us into hyperspace," he told him, pressing a patch (they'd been haphazardly shoved into a vent, which, while convenient, was perhaps not the best place for them in an emergency – he'd have to talk to Chewie about reorganizing) onto his friend's sluggishly bleeding head wound, face clammy under Han's own calloused fingers. "Just in case those scum have any friends. Hang onto something for a few minutes, okay?"

Luke nodded queasily, expression a familiar kind of unreadable as Han turned to head towards the cockpit, cutting a dark, forlorn figure in the corner of his eye, shivering under the Falcon's poor excuse for a lighting system.

 _Not a kid_ , Han reminded himself, stomach twisting as he made his way to the cockpit, sank down into the pilot's seat with a long-familiar exhaustion. His hands went through the take-off procedures almost without conscious thought, years of muscle-memory taking over. The creak and hum underneath his feet, the slightly concerning groan that shook the entire ship as they took off, the mesmerizing blur of hyperspace -

He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, listened to the sounds of home. Some things never changed.

Though, speaking of home -

He grabbed his comm, shook the water out of it as best he could, recorded a message for his wife. It was the night cycle where she and the kids were now. If she was asleep (he hoped she was – she needed it) he didn't want to wake her.

"All safe," he said. "Home soon. I love you."

He sent the message with a press of his thumb, leaned back in the chair with a sigh. Under the thrum of the hyperdrive, it echoed. Too quiet. It wasn't good, to be left alone with your thoughts while in hyperspace. Made it easier to lose it. He leveraged himself to his feet with a half-hearted scowl, damp, bare toes cold against the metal floor and headed back to the crew quarters, hand trailing absently, fondly, against the wall. Luke was practically where he'd left him, eyes closed, slouched uncomfortably against the wall of the bunk. He hadn't even taken his boots off.

"You wake up with foot rot, you aren't gonna be happy," Han remarked quietly. "I guess I have to do everything around here."

He stepped closer, perched on the edge of the bunk to remove his friend's boots, shaking his head at the dark, weathered bantha-hide. "Stylish but practical," he muttered, placing them on the floor, wondering which twin had picked them out. They reeked of Leia's influence, though it wasn't impossible that he'd picked them out himself. Only Luke, for all his embracing of the forgiving black-on-black colour scheme, still had a remarkable tendency toward the farmboy-esque without timely intervention. "Also soaking wet. You'd think they would have thought to waterproof."

Blue eyes cracked open.

"Don't run into water all that often," Luke said groggily, squinting, the bacta patch crinkling with the motion of his forehead. "But thanks. What – what happened?" He swallowed again, face bleaching of what little colour had returned. Han patted his ankle in sympathy, though his face pulled into a frown.

"I told you already, kid. You don't remember?"

The squint deepened. "I d-don't – it's a bit of a blur. You – you were meeting someone."

"Yeah," Han said, fighting to keep the scowl from his voice. "It – it didn't work out. I guess while I wasn't looking you got marked by a coupl'a bounty hunters. They put the whammy on your hot chocolate somehow, dragged you out into the alley."

"Oh," Luke said, slowly, face smoothing out. "Right. There was – there was a fight behind me, earlier. I turned around for a moment. A distraction. I sh-should have noticed."

"You said that earlier, too," Han said, cautiously. "It's alright. Leia must have picked up on something, before the drug really kicked in. She commed me, told me to find you. Saved your hide, kid."

"Wouldn't be the first time," and his eyes were crinkled with something sad and self-deprecating. It looked wrong on him, like a shirt that didn't fit.

"Yeah," Han said lightly. It was true – she'd dragged both of them away from certain doom more times than he could count, even before the business with the reborn Emperor. He so badly wanted to pretend that was what they were talking about, wanted to pretend like the past few months hadn't happened, wanted to pretend like he didn't feel like he was _missing something_ -

"Luke," he said instead, watching his friend shiver warily in the Falcon's gloom, damp hair curled around his bruised and battered face. "Out in that alleyway. You didn't fight back."

"Sure I did," Luke said. A stranger might not have noticed, but Han could see it, the way his mouth pressed together ever so slightly, the subtle tensing of his jaw. He was a terrible liar. Especially when he was lying to himself. "As best I could, anyway. I was d-drugged, Han."

"Yeah," Han replied, slowly, feeling his chest fill with some unpleasant revelation. "And we both know that you still could have sliced and diced those buffoons with one hand also tied behind your back." He didn't like this at all. "So why didn't you?"

There was a long, thick silence.

"It's a simple enough question," Han said, when the quiet had dragged on for too long. This was typical Luke – avoid an argument by simply _refusing to participate_ and Han was having none of it, the unpleasantness growing in his chest by the minute, reaching to begin the long crawl up his spine. "Has this type of thing happened before? If you're looking for some kind of _penance_ , kid -"

"That's not -" Luke interrupted haltingly, silence broken. "Is – is that what you think this is?"

"Well, what else could it be?" Han regretted the tone instantly, though he'd never admit it, regretted the way worry sometimes crawled its way out of his throat as anger, as spite, raised in front of him like a shield. Luke looked away from him deliberately, eyes focussing on the stretch of wall beside him, jaw working. He'd never liked being snapped at.

"There's no water, on Tatooine," he said finally. "I mean, no large bodies of water, like you have on other planets. Pools, lakes. Oceans."

"Well, yeah," Han said, eyebrow raised at the sudden change of subject, tone still sharper than he meant for it to be. "Place is a dustball. So?"

The kid still wouldn't look at him.

"So," he said, face carefully blank, like it so often was these days, "I never learned how to swim. Only – only, once, on a mission for the Rebellion, we got stranded. Wedge and I. Separated from the rest of our squadron, on this – this beautiful planet." He swallowed, a hint of farm boy wonder colouring his voice. "And I was so afraid, but it was the greenest place I'd ever seen in my entire life. Greener than any place I'd ever been able to imagine. But the only way to reach everybody, the only way to get back without adding days onto the rescue, was to get across this lake somehow and -"

He cut himself off, sighed in a way that was almost sheepish.

"I didn't want to mess it up. We had to swim across. So I played along, did what Wedge was doing, and it was fine, until it got deep. The edges of the lake were pretty shallow, see, but the centre – that was different. And I could – _feel_ , that something was about to go horribly wrong, but I couldn't -"

His cheeks had been slightly flushed before, from whatever leftover embarrassment he still felt, all these years later (Han felt a rush of exasperated affection – some things never changed), but all colour vanished from his face now, eyes becoming dark and hollow.

"I'd never been underwater before," he continued. "I had no – no context. No idea what to do. At first I thought maybe the worst part was not being able to breathe, but I was wrong, I think. It was just – dark, and cold. Empty. I forgot everything about who I was, what I cared about, how I had even gotten there in the first place. I just – sank." His eyes slid from the wall back to Han's face, expression rueful, almost apologetic. Han felt his stomach twist. "That's what it's like. The dark side."

"Kid," he said, the hairs on his arm raised on end, skin prickling uncomfortably, throat sour.

"The Force is like that lake, Han," Luke said. "The dark side isn't a – a stain you can remove. I used to think it was, but I was wrong. The dark side is the centre of that lake. There's no swimming through it. And now I'm worried that," his voice cracked, ever so slightly, "that if I dip my toe into the water again, I'll drown."

"Luke," he said quietly, not sure what words he had to follow.

Luke looked him in the eye, finally, sounding impossibly small. "I don't want to hurt anyone else," he said plainly. "That's all. I want – I want to find more Jedi. I want to learn enough that I don't – that I don't repeat my mistakes." He glanced down. "My father's mistakes. His legacy – what he did for me – _I've cheapened it_."

Han watched, throat closed in sympathy as Luke ran a shaking hand down his face, quietly miserable. "I want to rebuild the Order," he said. "Restore the Jedi to the galaxy, but maybe I'm not the right person for the job."

"You're the only person for the job," Han said with undisguised bluntness. "If you don't do it, _no one will_. Letting yourself get beat up in dingy back alleyways won't make you any more suitable for it, y'know." He paused. "Look," he said. "I don't – I won't pretend I understand all of this Jedi business, okay? In fact, I freely admit that some days it scares the nine Corellian hells out of me, that _you_ scare the nine Corellian hells out of me, but what I do understand -"

 _Find my brother, laserbrain_. He sighed internally. Damn, she was good.

"- what I do understand is people. And people – I don't care whether they're a Jedi Knight or Jabba the kriffing Hutt – they make mistakes." He looked his friend in the eye, something like understanding finally solidifying in his gut. "Especially when it comes to people they love. Especially when they're afraid. The difference lies in what they choose to do about it. I don't pretend to understand all that Force mumbo-jumbo. But it seems to me that this whole light and dark business is all about choice. And you – you chose to come back to us, even after everything that bastard did to you, even though you could barely remember your own name. And your father," and this was the hard sell, the part he struggled with the most, because Darth Vader had never been anything to him but a murderer, a torturer, a bringer of fear and pain, but - "He made that same choice too. And that's – that's where it counts, kid. Not your mistakes, but the choices you make after them."

Luke stared at him, face still too pale, eyes wide.

"I forgive you, you know," Han added, ostensibly just to fill the silence. "For what happened. I know I haven't exactly been – all that understanding, lately." He stood, stepping over his friend's abandoned boots laying soggily on the floor beside the bunk, tugging down the blanket out from under his friend.

"You're well within your rights," Luke said back, hair curling damply, looking small and somehow hollow, back against the bunk wall, feet bare. Not frightening in the slightest. Not very intimidating, either. Just sad and kind-looking, a hint of the sheepish kid he'd been poking through sometimes, just to remind you he was still there. That was the Luke he knew. He hadn't been lost. Buried for a while, maybe, but not lost.

Jedi were people too. It was easy to forget, sometimes.

"Maybe," Han said, throwing the thin sheet over his friend's legs, thoughts swirling towards where Chewie had stashed the extra blankets, their packets of hot chocolate. The kid was still shivering. And he'd never gotten to finish his drink at the bar. "I've been – afraid, lately. For my family. For the New Republic. For the baby." He paused. "And for you. Of you, for a little while, maybe. But mostly for you. Fear," he said, "makes people do funny things."

Luke smiled, the expression somehow wistful, but at least a little less self-deprecating than it had been. "So I've heard," he said.

"Forgiveness, though," Han said, feeling the yellow clear from his chest as something older, warmer, more familiar took its place. The Falcon hummed under his feet, rushing toward home. Something old and broken slotted back into place. "That's also a choice."

Luke hmmed in reply, still damp and scruffy-looking, face mottled by fists he hadn't felt like he could block. But he looked lighter now, some weight removed from his narrow shoulders, no longer a quiet, grim shadow at Han's back.

"So I've heard," he said, smiling.

* * *

Title and quote are from Mary Oliver's Wild Geese. Thanks for reading! Cross-posted to ao3.


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